Second world war

The rose-tinted view of female friendship shatters

21 June 2025 9:00 am

Are women’s relationships with each other today more brittle and less supportive than in the past?

No escaping mother: Lili is Crying, bv Hélène Bessette, reviewed

14 June 2025 9:00 am

A daughter longs to flee her parent’s boarding house in 1930s Provence, but her bid for independence fails in a story of thwarted love and shattered dreams

Germany’s Bundeswehr bears no resemblance to an actual army

31 May 2025 9:00 am

Confusion abounded this week when the new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that Ukraine could use western missiles to hit…

The mystifying cult status of Gertrude Stein

24 May 2025 9:00 am

The American author (of mostly unreadable books) was revered in 1920s Paris and became an international celebrity – though no one was quite sure why

Consorting with the enemy: The Propagandist, by Cécile Desprairies, reviewed

17 May 2025 9:00 am

The debut novel by a historian of the Vichy regime is a personal J’Accuse, indicting the collaborators in her family for their part in France’s collapse in the second world war

Who could persuade you to fight for Britain today?

10 May 2025 9:00 am

This week we celebrated VE Day. When Pericles remembered the dead from the war against Sparta in his famous Funeral…

Bring on the Trump protests

3 May 2025 9:00 am

The coming week will see the last major commemoration of a second world war anniversary – 80 years since VE-Day…

What would Livy have made of Trump’s treatment of Harvard?

26 April 2025 9:00 am

It is not surprising that Donald Trump holds the law in contempt. That is what happens when you have a…

How I found Christianity

19 April 2025 9:00 am

I wasn’t brought up in the faith. My maternal grandfather was a Methodist lay-preacher, but when my mother left County…

Bringing modernism to the masses in 20th-century Britain

29 March 2025 9:00 am

Owen Hatherley examines the contribution of refugees from central Europe to the film industry, publishing and public art, especially architecture and town planning

Were the Arctic convoy sacrifices worth it?

9 November 2024 9:00 am

Stalin privately admitted that his army could never have triumphed without western aid, and the convoys also indirectly helped the war in the Atlantic – but the loss of life was horrendous

Jonathan Raban’s last hurrah

16 September 2023 9:00 am

Aged 69, the travel writer had a stroke and spent his last 20 years as a hemiplegic – and writing this memoir of his father’s life intertwined with snapshots of his own

Letter from Latvia

15 July 2023 9:00 am

I may never recover: Sisu reviewed

27 May 2023 9:00 am

When I went into the Sisu screening I knew only that it was a Finnish film, so was expecting an…

Sad, blinkered and incoherent: Arcola’s The Misandrist reviewed

20 May 2023 9:00 am

A new play, The Misandrist, looks at modern dating habits. Rachel is a smart, self-confident woman whose partner is a…

My lunch with the Queen

17 September 2022 9:00 am

None of this would have happened had I accepted my neighbour’s invitation to dine with a Swiss billionaire banker, or…

Spare us the preaching: The Railway Children Return reviewed

30 July 2022 9:00 am

It doesn’t help the cause of The Railway Children Return that the original 1970 Railway Children film is currently on…

In praise of Greek royalty

4 June 2022 9:00 am

New York Prince Pavlos, heir to the Greek throne, turned 55 recently and I threw a small dinner for him.…

Fascinating exhibitions – clunky editorialising: Breaking the News at the British Library reviewed

7 May 2022 9:00 am

In The Spectator office’s toilets there are framed front covers of the events that didn’t happen: Corbyn beats Boris; ‘Here’s…

Mostly gripping – and boasts not one but two Mr Darcys: Operation Mincemeat reviewed

16 April 2022 9:00 am

Operation Mincemeat is based on the book by Ben Macintyre, which in turn is based on what Sir Hugh Trevor-Roper…

The moral courage of P.J. O’Rourke

26 February 2022 9:00 am

Was it Socrates who said that chaos was the natural state of mankind, and tyranny the usual remedy? Actually it…

Robert Harris on Boris Johnson, cancel culture and rehabilitating Chamberlain

22 January 2022 9:00 am

Nigel Jones talks to the writer Robert Harris about Blair, Johnson and Polanski, cancel culture and his quest to rehabilitate Neville Chamberlain

The forgotten story of the pioneering surgeon who healed disfigured airmen

27 November 2021 9:00 am

Lloyd Evans on a musical that tells the story of the pioneering maverick whose methods for treating disfigured second world war airmen revolutionised plastic surgery

Can the fiasco of the Dieppe Raid really be excused?

6 November 2021 9:00 am

In my mother’s final days we had a long conversation about the second world war. I asked if she’d ever…

Grimy, echt and gripping: Netflix's The Forgotten Battle reviewed

30 October 2021 9:00 am

The Forgotten Battle is a Dutch feature film commemorating the desperate and relatively little-known Allied assault on the Scheldt estuary…